This week's edition of 2000AD (Prog 1539) features the return of one of the comics original artists. Mick McMahon, who draws the latest Judge Dredd strip, hadn't contributed to the weekly for five years before this current venture (written by Robbie Morrison).
In recent years, Mick has worked in the computer games industry, (and before that, I'm proud to say, he illustrated a strip for Sonic the Comic wot I wrote) but it's Judge Dredd that he is best remembered for. Although Dredd was designed by Carlos Ezquerra, it was Mick McMahon who drew the first published Judge Dredd strip (in 2000AD No.2, 1977) and Mick became one of the regular, and most respected, artists on the character for the first few years of the comic.
Never content to allow his style to stagnate, Mick McMahon has always evolved and developed his techniques to drawing and colour. The results have always been unique and impressive, leading the eye around the page as they should. This latest work is no exception.
Mick also has a website now, which you can visit at http://mickmcmahon.onlinefolio.biz/index.asp
I'm selling my edition of the very first issue of Viz Comic over on eBay this week. This is the issue that started it all, way back in 1979, long before it appeared in High Street newsagents! Take a look if you're interested HERE.
Just found a few more pics from the Bristol Comics Expo, so they've been added to the report. To see them, scroll down to that blog entry or click here
Above (top): The dummy cover to this year's Doctor Who Storybook and, below it, the actual cover that will be published.
The cover image for the Doctor Who Storybook 2008 has been released, which will be published by Panini in August. For all intents and purposes this is the Doctor Who Annual, but as the BBC now publish their own title with that name for a younger reader Panini use the term "Storybook" instead. (In effect, this means two Doctor Who annuals a year.)
Not exactly a comic book, as the contents contain eight illustrated stories, but presumably there will be one comic strip in there (as was the format for last year's Storybook). Writers from the tv series are amongst the contributors.
The book is ready for pre-order from Amazon here:
http://tinyurl.com/yptduq
The Bristol International Comic Expo is over for another year and, from all accounts that I heard there, a good time was had by all. Visibly busier than last year, with thousands in attendance and numerous guests from the world of comics. Here's just a few of the many comic creators and exhibitors who were there during the weekend (click on highlights in the text to visit their websites etc. Click on photos to see them enlarged.):
1: Siku explaining the concept of his "kick-ass" version of Jesus, during a presentation of his artwork for The Manga Bible, during the Manga panel on Saturday morning.
2: Phil Clarke (organizer of the very first British comics convention way back in 1968) has, with a partner, recently bought the entire archive of IPC original comics artwork from the 1960s and 1970s! Better still, he's offering the pages for sale to the public! Some genuinely important items of comics history here, including Adam Eterno, The Spider, Jet Ace Logan, Mytek the Mighty... you name it, Phil's probably got a page of it you can buy! Contact Phil at blasebooks@aol.com to inquire more info.
3: Phil's art collection also includes pages from Look-In, such as artwork by the fantastic Mike Noble and John Burns.
4: Roger Langridge with his highly recommended Fred the Clown book, published by Fantagraphics.
5: The mighty Shane Chebsey manning the UKomics stall, which featured an impressive selection of brand new British independent comics.
6: Lou, manager of Birmingham's Forbidden Planet Megastore and staff.
7: Mirthful Mike Collins, seemingly drawing non-stop over the weekend for legions of fans eager to have a piece of original art by the artist of the Doctor Who comic strip.
8: Comic book inker supreme, Merry Mark Farmer thinking about his next royalty cheque.
9: Visible evidence that readers of Sonic the Comic didn't grow up to be nerds, Zoe Stead is now a talented comic artist and author. Her prose novel The Amulet of Vichalace is now available from Amazon.co.uk.
10: Crowds of comic fans on a very busy weekend. The layout of the stalls inside the exhibition hall was much better this year and helped to make the whole event a more enjoyable experience.
11: DC Thomson artists Nigel Parkinson (Cuddles and Dimples, Bea) and Wayne Thompson (Jak, Joe Jitsu) at the humour comics signing on Saturday afternoon.
12: Jane, one of the Expo organizers, with V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd (whose new graphic novel Kickback is available from Amazon.co.uk.
To his left is Beano and Viz artist Paul Palmer.
13: Nigel Dobbyn, who seems to have drawn everything from Judge Dredd to Billy the Cat, flaunting a bottle of water before a rapidly dehydrating Dave Windett .
14: Humour comics genius or bonkers madman? You decide! It's Jamie Smart, creator of unmissable My Own Genie and Space Raoul in The Dandy, and indie adult comic Bear! And like an oaf I've forgotten his girlfriend's name. Sorry!
15: I must have had a ten minute conversation with Gary Millidge at every UK comics convention since 1979. Meaning I've only actually known him for about four hours. But that's enough to know that he's one of our top talents and that if you're a comics fan of taste you'll already have Gary's absorbing Strangehaven graphic novels on your bookshelf.
16: Behold! It's jovial John McCrea doing a sketch for a fan who's so excited by the prospect that I had to cut him off the picture in order to adhere to the Terms and Conditions of this website.
17: Attending his first UK comics event for many years, Tim Perkins had a table to promote the range of artwork and gift items from his online shop at http://www.wizards-keep.com/
18: British comics need a revolution and when it happens it'll come from the independent sector via titles like the ever-improving FutureQuake. Art editor Dave Evans is ready!
19: Yay! It's the legendary Glenn Fabry and his wife Nikki. Respected amongst his peers and his fans for the high quality of his artwork, Glenn has illustrated strips and painted covers for 2000 AD, Vertigo, and more.
20: Although both brilliantly funny cartoonists in their independent careers, Laura Howell and Hunt Emerson team up every week to produce the Ratz strip for The Beano. 
21: Dynamic Dave Gibbons hosts the ever-popular Hypotheticals panel on the Sunday afternoon, with an all-star line up including Kurt Busiek, David Bishop, and Jock. 22: Just a few of the many independent comics available at the Expo. Who says British comics are dead? Granted, some of these titles aren't profit-making, but over 25 years ago Viz began as a small print-run title and developed into one of the top selling magazines in the country! Inevitably, with the sheer number of different indie comics being produced now the chances are that some of them will hit the big time. From little acorns...Meanwhile, amongst the major UK publishers, Titan Magazines are expanding their line this year. The recent launches of Shaun the Sheep Comic and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comic (both featuring some brand new comic strips) will soon be joined by the return of the Transformers as a British comic, which will include some new material by Simon Furman and Geoff Senior (the team who made the original Transformers comic such a hit in the 1980s). Not only that, but Titan also have a new Tank Girl series planned, written by Alan Martin and drawn by Mike McMahon! Other books include collections of classic Jeff Hawke newspaper strips by Sydney Jordan, and in October, at long last, the first UK edition of the hugely popular Norwegian strip Nemi by Lise Myhre, reprinting the English language version from Metro.
But the happiest news of the weekend came as Dave Gibbons announced to the audience that he'd been absent from the Saturday events because he'd attended the wedding of Lost Girls creators Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. Congratulations to the happy couple who, as ever were resplendently stylish as this photo on CBR illustrates.
UPDATE! 24th May 2007: Found a few more photos I'd forgotten I'd taken (on my mobile) plus one of me that Gary Millidge took:
23: Comics folk gather in the bar of the Ramada Hotel on the Saturday night. This was at 8.00pm. By midnight the bar was packed and it ran dry!
24: Ben McCool the Two-Pint Kid! How are you going to smoke that cigarette then Ben?
25: The River Avon. The comparative amount of liquid that was drank in the Ramada Bar.
26: I hate Star Wars. ;-)
Since 1997 I've been writing and drawing the misadventures of a family of Satanists for the Swedish branch of Egmont publishing. The five page strip appears in the Swedish and Norwegian editions of Herman Hedning comic, under the name ForortsSatanisterna (Sweden) and ForstadsSatanistine (Norway), both meaning "Suburban Satanists".
For various reasons due to family bereavement and illnesses I had to put production on that strip on the back burner over the last year or more, but now it returns to the pages of the latest issue, Herman Hedning No.3 /2007. (A new volume starts every January. It's actually issue 67.) I've just received copies from Sweden and as usual the printing is crisp and Ulf Granberg (also the editor) has done a great colouring job on it.
In this episode, the DeVille family decide to take a holiday, but as ever things don't go to plan. I write the five pagers as a sit-com, but each tier of drawings is a gag in itself, yet moving the story along into a complete story. An unusual way to work but in Scandinavia comics collecting newspaper strips are very popular, so I've used that format because it's what the readers are familiar with. Coming up with four self-contained yet connected gags per page was a different rhythm of writing to what I was used to but it was an enjoyable challenge to adapt to that technique.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the strip and it's provoked some interesting reactions along the way. The first complaint the strip received was actually from a Satanist bemoaning that real Satanists don't conjure up the devil. The strip also caused Egmont to slap a "mature readers" advisory on the comic once or twice (an unusual occurrence for a Norwegian comic) and most bizarrely of all, some woman on an internet forum once confused fiction with reality, angrily claiming I lounged around in a hot tub with other "Satanist cartoonists"! (You'd have to pay a publicist a mint for that sort of cool rumour and I got it free! ;-))
Hopefully Suburban Satanists will now appear on a more frequent basis again, and the next issue it features in should be issue 5. Unfortunately the comic is still not available in English, (publishers being a bit too jittery about offending religion over here) but I hope to self-publish a Suburban Satanists small press comic later in the year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the strip. Watch this space for details as and when. The official Herman Hedning website can be found HERE.
As mentioned a while back, I'm one of the many guests at the Bristol International Comic Expo this coming weekend (May 12th / 13th). I'm scheduled for a signing / sketching session at 4.30pm on Saturday, and for a panel discussion on children's comics at 4.00pm on Sunday, at the British Empire and Commonwealth Exhibition Hall (right next to the railway station) so please come along and it'll be good to see you.
4.00pm SUNDAY - YOU’RE HAVIN’ A LAFF Meet the creators behind the Dandy, Beano and Toxic. A Kids cartoon special with Kev Sutherland,Ilya, Dave Windett, Paul Palmer,Lew Stringer, Jaspre Bark and Nigel Dobbyn.
For full details of all the weekend's events, visit the official Comic Expo website HERE.
